Mitrice Richardson, found dead who is responsible?

Who is to blame for the death of a beautiful, intelligent, young black woman in a remote canyon  near Malibu California.

If you’re not familiar with Mitrice L. Richardson she came to the attention of the public and the news media after she disappeared following her release in the middle of the night from a remote sheriff’s substation in Malibu California.

Initially it was a small story in local papers in Los Angeles about a young woman that had been arrest for failure to pay her dinner bill had disappeared following her arrest by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy.

At the time the national media attention was far more focused on the disappearance of a white girl from a Metallica concert on the East Coast who was later found dead. It not unusual for the national news media to all but ignore black women and children that comes up missing. The media will often give thousands of hours of attention to the disappearance of a beautiful young white girl.

Natalee Holloway is just one example of the media’s love affair with stories that involve missing white girls. If you look under Holloway missing on Goggle you find 981,000 articles and bits of information.

Chandra Ann Levy another white girl missing that the news media devoted 100,000 hours of coverage too. A Check of the Internet on Google brings up 4,270,000 articles and bits of information.

The media never gives the same attention to a story when it involves a minority, sad but true. How many of you even know that two other women disappeared and were likely murdered by the same person that killed Levy?

Now under Mitrice L. Richardson you’ll only 112,000 and over 2/3 of those have came since she was found dead.

This girl Ms. Richardson’s crime that led to her death was she became disoriented and made bizarre statements at a Malibu bar and restaurant. She was arrested when she was unable to pay her dinner bill of $86.00.  Under California state criminal code it’s called defrauding an innkeeper.

After the sheriff’s deputies arrived other patrons offered to pay her bill but this was not allowed. Even when in nearly all cases involving this kind of misdemeanor a citation is issued. Yet this beautiful young black woman was handcuffed and arrested with prior criminal record or outstanding warrants?

She did not resist arrest, or argue, or fight with the deputy. There was no real justifiable reason for her not being released on a citation. She had no criminal background or outstanding warrants.  In fact this particular young black woman had graduated from nearby Pepperdine with a 4.0 average, not your run of the mill criminal type.

One reason some law enforcement experts reasoned that her bizarre behavior in the restaurant caused the deputy to take her into custody for her own safety. If that were the case why didn’t the deputy take her to the county mental health facility for observation?

No she was booked at the Lost Hills substation of the L.A. county sheriff office. Sadly the name Lost Hills substation reverberates with a very tragic ending in this story. This facility is in an isolated part of Malibu, far from any well lit area.

Ms. Richardson had no money, no identification, no cell phone, and no way to get home from where they released her in the middle of the night!

Now she’s dead and we’re left asking who is responsible. L.A. County Sheriff’s department says they did everything by the book. While if that’s true and I seriously doubt that to be true then the book is really screwed up!

The sheriff department refuses to release any tapes of her booking or release that might answer what condition she was in at the time of her booking and release. What are they hiding? If as they say there was no reason the booking and releasing personnel would have known she might be in danger if released in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere? Why withhold the tapes from the family and the public. If they say we can’t because of the principle of it then they’re admitting they have no principles.

A girl or young woman is dead, now in a City like Los Angeles that sees more than it’s share of tragic deaths every day that might not mean a great deal. But my God it should mean something to all of us.

We all have people we love that could end up in police custody at some time for something minor or like in this case it appears she was struggling mentally. My Lord that should not be a death sentence, and went it is we should mountains if necessary to see what went wrong and prevent it from ever happening to someone else child.

What is L.A.S.O.’s reluctance?

If it’s due to the family filing lawsuits against them, while the law suits might go away if the tapes clear up the questions of her mental condition at the time of her release?

The family has every right in fact a responsibility to their daughter to ask that every question be answered satisfactorily. To date they have received most stone walling from Sheriff’s office which only makes the family and frankly the public ask more questions.

We may never know if she was murdered or fell victim to exposure both are plausible. Was she this victim of a sex crime and then murdered to keep her from identifying her attacker?

None of us ever wants to believe a law enforcement officer would do something like that but yet we know it has occurred on more than one occasion in California, Florida, and elsewhere. Several cases have occurred where law enforcement officers commit a rape and then commit a murder to try and cover it up.

A CHP, California Highway Patrol officer in San Diego comes to mind as well as a CHP officer out in the desert near Barstow. An officer in Florida raped and killed at least one woman and two young girls before he was caught. There are other cases around the country where this has occurred.

Lost Hills station has had cases in the past of deputies committing sexual assault on women as have most law enforcement agencies of any size. San Diego had a famous serial rapist that had been a San Diego Padre base-ball player before becoming an officer. He went on to commit at least five brutal rapes and attempt murder before he was arrested.

While it’s not common it happens, and no one should be above suspicion as this young woman was arrested taken to facility, then released in the middle of nowhere and ended up dead.

Her family has had a running battle with the L.A. Sheriff’s office and the L.A. P.D. mostly due to those agencies unwillingness to investigate the possibility negligence or criminal behavior by a sheriff’s deputy that resulted in this girl’s disappearance and now her death.

Law enforcement is big on admitting that one of their own did something that resulted in the death of an innocent person. Cover-ups are common in these cases and anyone thinks otherwise has their head buried in the sand.

Frankly if her parents were not upset it would more disturbing that the fact they have felt from the beginning that the sheriff’s office and then the L.A. P.D. were not being candid with them.

Every time this family turned around when anything new happened in the case they learned about it from the media and not the investigators.

Near the end of this case just a month before she was discovered dead an effort was made to strongly suggest she was not a missing person, but was in fact a prostitute in Las Vegas. What a cheap low blow by the L.A. Sheriff’s department and L.A. P.D. in an attempt shift the blame for her disappearance from themselves to the victim. 

L.A. S.O’s actions in suggesting that she was a prostitute when there was never any evidence that she ever engaged in that kind of behavior is reprehensible. Whoever came up with that idea and whoever approved that course of action should be drummed out of the law enforcement profession.

This disinformation campaign waged against this innocent girl is not something knew, it happens all the time in this country. Law enforcement agencies have very close ties with the media, as the media relies on law enforcement for a great deal of their hard news. Law enforcement agency plant blatantly false and totally misleading stories with the media in an effort to steer public opinion in the direct the agency wants the public to go, most frequently it occurs when someone within the agency has really screwed up bad.

What is actually worse is the news agencies have known for a great many years that they are being used and they allow it to happen time and time again. All they care about is getting a story it matters little or not at all if it’s true or not.

Will this young lady that had her entire life ahead of her receive any measure of justice for how she was treated? No likely as not she will be written off as a tragic accident. Eventfully the L.A. County will settle out of court with the family for an undisclosed sum and the case will be forgotten.

A 4.0 student that might have gone on to be anything you might imagine never got the chance. Protecting lives is the highest responsibility people in law enforcement have and yet she was not afforded that protection.

Right now hands are being firmly placed over people’s butts and fingers will be pointed away from anyone involved. Sooner or later they will tell us through their media whores that the victim was ultimately responsible for this tragedy.  Sadly most people that hear it, see it, or read it in some form from the media will slowly shake their heads and agree.

Why, partly because she was a mentally disturbed, partly because she was not related to them.  Finally and sadly more than 40 years after President Johnson got the Equal Rights Act passed, many people will only remember that this beautiful, intelligent young woman was black, and didn’t the police say she was a prostitute?